News time is here! (Update on new releases and announcements in June!)

     Hey friends, last week I talked about the games that are coming soon, and apparently the internet wanted to taunt me after that post. Almost immediately after I published it, the news broke that Sony was going to do a State of Play presentation on June 2 which will run for 30 minutes and focus primarily on third party releases as well as unveiling PSVR2 for the first time! Earlier this week, we got news that a new trailer was coming for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, and that trailer aired this morning and I got so interested that I just decided to focus on that this week. I'll also talk about any potential news that comes out of the Sony State of Play, but I'll do it in chronological order, so let's talk about Pokemon first!

An Open-World adventure!

    Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are looking to be much more different than I originally thought. When I first reported on the games right after the first trailer, I talked about how the clothes were different depending on which game you chose, but also noted that you'll most likely be able to change clothes after the outset of the journey. Thanks to this trailer, we learned that there is not only one professor of this region, but depending on whether you choose Scarlet or Violet, you'll get either Professor Saba or Professor Turo respectively. I have to wonder if there's some major time difference between Scarlet and Violet just because of the costumes of the two professors, but we'll get to that in a bit. The trailer also introduced us seemingly to the rival of the game, Nemona. According to the website, she is a really powerful trainer and will act as a guide for our character, but in an interesting twist, "...it does also seem that she's not the best at throwing Poke Balls." I don't understand what that means, maybe our character will have to teach her how to catch Pokemon but she knows how to train them? It seems like a strange quirk for our rival to have, but maybe it'll make things interesting in some other way. 

    Since we're talking about Pokemon here, I guess I should mention the little monsters that make the world go round. We see a bit more of the Starter Pokemon, Sprigatito, Quaxly, and Fuecoco, along with newcomers Pawmi (the Pikachu clone this time around), Lechonk (possibly the best Pokemon name in the whole franchise), and Smolive (which is great wordplay as this grass Pokemon has an olive on its head). We saw a few returning Pokemon in the trailer, Fletchling, Flaaffy, Chewtle, Venonat, Larvitar and Bagon, to name a few, as well as the Legendaries. The Legendary Pokemon this time around are Koraidon and Miraidon, which look very similar and they lean into my earlier thought about differences in time between the two versions of this game. With the Professors, Saba is wearing almost what looks to be a stereotypical "caveman" costume, which fits with Koraidon looking almost like a figure from ancient Japanese mythology, while Professor Turo is wearing a pretty futuristic looking costume which fits with Miraidon looking like a futuristic version of the other Pokemon, complete with jet engines. People have also posted on Twitter in the past day that "Turo" is short for "futuro," the Spanish word for the future, while Sada is short for the Spanish word for the past, "Pasada." This game is looking really cool, and that includes the 4 player co-op that they're showing in this open world adventure, which I'm really looking forward to. In Pokemon Legends: Arceus, I really enjoyed talking to my friends about different areas where you could find different hidden Pokemon, but it would be even better to actually explore these different places with friends by your side! It's also nice to see random trainer battles out in the open world, which wasn't really a thing in Arceus, and I'm also curious to see just how much of the combat was changed in this game, but this trailer didn't show a lot of it. One added bonus was just announced, Toby Fox of Undertale fame is going to be composing the Field theme for this game, which is a big step forward for him after he composed the "Battle Tower" theme for Pokemon Sword and Shield. Either way, I'm very excited for this upcoming title, and we'll be able to talk about it for sure on November 18, when the game comes out.

Lechonk in all his piggy splendor!

A Speedy Open-World Adventure!

    Sonic Frontiers has had very few details released until now, when IGN posted a 7 minute preview of what the new game is going to look like. We've known that the game would be open world (I think they called it open-zone) but we weren't sure exactly what it was going to look like. So far what was shown, which wasn't much, consists of Sonic running around and doing easy athletic challenges to collect what looks to be fragments of a heart. I don't think it's too far into the realm of speculation to think that it could increase his health like how the spirit orbs could be used to upgrade Link's health or stamina in Breath of the Wild, though I don't know what that would mean for Sonic, since he typically uses rings as his health meter. Again, we were given very little to go off of, but it is beginning to solidify what we can expect from this game, even though it looks as if the game is still in the pretty early stages with how basic the scenery looks. It looks good, but there are lots of things that don't look quite finished yet, I'd say. I just really hope that Sonic Team will take their time to get the game done in a way that allows it to be something pretty special and blow us all away. That being said, it's still got a long way to go, and as it's projected to release this year, they may want to delay it if this is what they have to show so far. This may just be an early build, which is entirely possible, we'll just have to see how this turns out.

The State of that State of Play!

    The State of Play that Sony put out on June 2nd was pretty exciting, even though it didn't feel like a massive event. We knew going into it that it would be focusing on third party titles and games made for PSVR2, the new Virtual Reality system that Sony has been working on for the PS5, and they stuck to that for the most part. There were some really exciting reveals here, which all kicked off with the long-rumored remake of Resident Evil 4, which is coming out next March. Many people have hoped that this wouldn't happen, since so many think of this game as being just about perfect, but I'm interested to see how this game will work with the RE Engine, especially after the pretty great remakes of 2 and 3. They also took this time to announce that this game is being worked on for PSVR2, as well as Resident Evil 8:Village. This isn't a huge surprise, since Resident Evil 7 also had a version for VR, but it's a nice confirmation to get. Stray is the Cyberpunk cat game that people have been talking about since it was first revealed at the PS5's pre-launch event, and it's finally almost here, coming in August. We got our first look at Horizon VR: Call of the Mountain, which I think they've announced before, but it looks like a neat way to immerse yourself in the world of the Horizon series if you just can't get enough of the world, even after the massive experience from Horizon: Forbidden West which just came out back in February. I'm not looking at that much, considering I'm not planing on buying the PSVR2, but we'll see if that changes in the future. Speaking of Horizon: Forbidden West, it recieved a pretty massive update which somehow makes the game look even more incredible than it already did, also adding New Game + and Ultra Hard difficulty options! Street Fighter 6 had a little showcase, revealing some open world-ish elements to the well known arcade fighter, so we'll see just how much changes in the formula as we get closer to the release. The biggest reveal was most likely the new trailer for Final Fantasy XVI, which is looking pretty spectacular. I love the added focus on the summons here, and I'm curious about the big health bars that showed for most of the trailer that had an almost "fighting game" vibe, but we'll see how that goes when the game releases next Summer. I'm certainly excited for it, even though I don't really consider myself a huge Final Fantasy fan.

    This has been a big week for news, and it's just kicking off the month of June, which is looking pretty packed all around, so I may do some more news-based posts like this in the next few weeks to come. I've tried my best to pack a lot of information in a relatively condensed package, so let's hope that I've succeeded in letting you know about details of new releases if you don't want to watch the whole videos.

    Thanks so much for your support, friends! I'm always excited to hear about new releases and details of them, so this time of year is always really interesting, even on years like this one where E3 isn't happening. I hope you've had a great week, and I hope you saw something that interested you! I'm Jonathan, your self-proclaimed gaming news enthusiast, and I'll talk to you again soon!